As Europe’s major economies focus on belt-tightening, they are following the path of Ireland. But the once thriving nation is struggling, with no sign of a rapid turnaround in sight.

Nearly two years ago, an economic collapse forced Ireland to cut public spending and raise taxes, the type of austerity measures that financial markets are now pressing on most advanced industrial nations…

Rather than being rewarded for its actions, though, Ireland is being penalized. Its downturn has certainly been sharper than if the government had spent more to keep people working. Lacking stimulus money, the Irish economy shrank 7.1 percent last year and remains in recession…

[David Stronge] moved to reinvent himself, returning to school with thousands of other Irish, in hopes that a higher degree would lead to better prospects. Mr. Stronge plans to seek alternative energy jobs in Britain once he gets his master’s degree in August.

“Ireland isn’t going to spend on infrastructure probably for another 10 to 15 years,” he said. “So you have to go to where the opportunities are.”

At the D Café, a sandwich shop facing a stretch of empty buildings in Dublin’s Docklands enclave, even that dream seems impossible. “If you’re self-employed and lose your job, you’re entitled to nothing, not even the dole,” said Debbie, the owner, who would only give her first name.

She transformed her convenience store into a deli when Liam Carroll, a property baron, threw up the nearby developments. But the tenants never came, and her business evaporated.

“It’s so destroying,” she said, gazing out the window. “We all live day by day, and we don’t know when it will ever pick up.”

Of course, much of the world’s elite understand exactly what they’re doing: i.e., use the economic catastrophe they themselves created as a pretext to kill the welfare state they’ve despised for 65 years. Nonetheless, a significant chunk of them actually believe they’re doing the right thing for everyone.

Related

All of this, since day one of the crash, has been winding toward a planetwide attack on ‘socialist’ institutions and the concept that government should do something useful for anyone other than millionaires. Everywhere you turn, austerity measures are on the table, battering the poor and middle class…and leaving the ultra wealthy untouched. And everywhere that an austere hand has been at the helm, only lingering unemployment and rising poverty result.

My advice to the Irish is this: dust off those bombs and guns you used to fight the British years ago…when the IMF and World Bank come to deliver the terms of your ‘bailout’…kill them. Throw out any Irish politician who agreed to the bailout, and institute laws that make it treasonous for any future elected official to sign any such agreements. Kill everyone who steps off a plane and mentions a plan to lend Ireland money…because the terms will be such that you will wind up a third world backwater, living in eternal debt slavery so brutal that your collective memories of British occupation will pale in comparison. Take lessons from North Korea and be as cantankerous as possible if you need the refresher course…and you will be hated…but you will be freer than if you sign on that dreaded dotted line. It’s only too late if the money is accepted and spent…so fight, fight now, and fight as long as it takes to make Ireland such a no-go zone that IMF and World Bank fatcats won’t dare set foot on it.

St. Patrick drove away the snakes…it’s been a long while…and now they’re back. This time its up to you.

http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

All of this, since day one of the crash, has been winding toward a planetwide attack on ‘socialist’ institutions and the concept that government should do something useful for anyone other than millionaires. Everywhere you turn, austerity measures are on the table, battering the poor and middle class…and leaving the ultra wealthy untouched. And everywhere that an austere hand has been at the helm, only lingering unemployment and rising poverty result.

My advice to the Irish is this: dust off those bombs and guns you used to fight the British years ago…when the IMF and World Bank come to deliver the terms of your ‘bailout’…kill them. Throw out any Irish politician who agreed to the bailout, and institute laws that make it treasonous for any future elected official to sign any such agreements. Kill everyone who steps off a plane and mentions a plan to lend Ireland money…because the terms will be such that you will wind up a third world backwater, living in eternal debt slavery so brutal that your collective memories of British occupation will pale in comparison. Take lessons from North Korea and be as cantankerous as possible if you need the refresher course…and you will be hated…but you will be freer than if you sign on that dreaded dotted line. It’s only too late if the money is accepted and spent…so fight, fight now, and fight as long as it takes to make Ireland such a no-go zone that IMF and World Bank fatcats won’t dare set foot on it.

St. Patrick drove away the snakes…it’s been a long while…and now they’re back. This time its up to you.

Ironaddict06

Where is the IRA, when they are needed?

Hadrian999

actually not too long ago the RIRA announced a campaign against bankers was in the works

http://dmipr.com/ Donovan Moore

Maybe they can get a bank bailout and start making Delorean Cars again. Back to the future baby!@

http://spiritnewsdaily.com/ Donovan Moore

Maybe they can get a bank bailout and start making Delorean Cars again. Back to the future baby!@

Liam_McGonagle

I think I totally agree with the major premise of this article, as I understand it: The IMF are a bunch of fucking retards who mistake ‘wealth’ or ‘profit’ hoarding activities with ‘productive’ activities. Just posted an examination of the fucked up situation in the states.

It’s like we, Western cultures in general, have such a perverse or poor understanding of what true productive economic activity is that we create fetishes of these statistics that should really frighten us as ‘death fetishes’: EPS, Retained Earnings, Profit, etc., etc., etc. We should focus on alternate measures like fiscal multipliers or velocity of funds or some such instead.

Yeah, this situation is totally heartbreaking for Ireland. I can barely make myself think of how my friends and cousins are going to weather these next few years. The only thing I take encouragement from is the fact that the Irish have never obeyed anyone ever in their history as a distinct culture. As Vox Magi and others have pointed out already, they have more than enough incentive to tell the IMF to fuck off. They probably will at some point.

Liam_McGonagle

I think I totally agree with the major premise of this article, as I understand it: The IMF are a bunch of fucking retards who mistake ‘wealth’ or ‘profit’ hoarding activities with ‘productive’ activities. Just posted an examination of the fucked up situation in the states.

It’s like we, Western cultures in general, have such a perverse or poor understanding of what true productive economic activity is that we create fetishes of these statistics that should really frighten us as ‘death fetishes’: EPS, Retained Earnings, Profit, etc., etc., etc. We should focus on alternate measures like fiscal multipliers or velocity of funds or some such instead.

Yeah, this situation is totally heartbreaking for Ireland. I can barely make myself think of how my friends and cousins are going to weather these next few years. The only thing I take encouragement from is the fact that the Irish have never obeyed anyone ever in their history as a distinct culture. As Vox Magi and others have pointed out already, they have more than enough incentive to tell the IMF to fuck off. They probably will at some point.

Liam_McGonagle

I think I totally agree with the major premise of this article, as I understand it: The IMF are a bunch of fucking retards who mistake ‘wealth’ or ‘profit’ hoarding activities with ‘productive’ activities. Just posted an examination of the fucked up situation in the states.

It’s like we, Western cultures in general, have such a perverse or poor understanding of what true productive economic activity is that we create fetishes of these statistics that should really frighten us as ‘death fetishes’: EPS, Retained Earnings, Profit, etc., etc., etc. We should focus on alternate measures like fiscal multipliers or velocity of funds or some such instead.

Yeah, this situation is totally heartbreaking for Ireland. I can barely make myself think of how my friends and cousins are going to weather these next few years. The only thing I take encouragement from is the fact that the Irish have never obeyed anyone ever in their history as a distinct culture. As Vox Magi and others have pointed out already, they have more than enough incentive to tell the IMF to fuck off. They probably will at some point.

http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

Love the dystopia diaries…good number crunching. You must have the kinda skills my chum from my gutter punk days picked up studying stat/analysis. Love that man like a brother…his mathematics and data extraction skills have spared me from many a nights headache. I weigh in heavier in the philosophy dept, semantics of language, classical literature etc…but I can’t extract data from raw statistics to save my life.

I’m inclined to look at it as team mates playing complementary positions. Half-forward, mid-field, etc., etc. The all-out onslaught required to carry out memetic struggle requires a deep, deep bench. As I’m finding out.

Some few folks respond intensely to the data crunching, but are left entirely in the cold by the weird literary allegories. And vice versa.

You know, almost all the stuff on Disinformation, including but beyond their regular book and DVD publications, is just incredibly mind expanding. I get lots of inspiration from these article postings, comments from folks like you and Emporerreagan and others.

One of my weirdest interpretations of a Disinfo-inspired idea was the inclusion of the workbooks supporting the calculations in the blogposts. I remember that 2007 speech of Grant Morrison’s at the convention where he went on at some length about the construction of magickal sigils as vehicles to focus one’s intentions for the accomplishment of some pretty miraculous feats.

And while I’m nearly 100% certain that Morrison could give a rat’s ass about economics as a discipline, I did recognize that the business and policy community employ sigils of their own. In fact they spend immense amounts of time and energy in constructing them–profit and loss statements, earnings-per-share calculations, market indices, economic and tax models, etc., etc.

It’s just unfortunate that, whether they’re aware of it or not, the sigils they’ve constructed are actually created in a spirit which spells our doom as a culture.

The rational and irrational are not quite so completely at odds as narrow idealist or positivist schools would have us believe. In fact, I don’t think you could ever really have an adequate understanding of either school unless you have a minimal understanding of BOTH schools.

http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

I’ve had the same experience with disinfo…both the site and the books..especially the Underground! alternative archaeology release (I go a big rubbery one whenever I start reading about anomalous discoveries that alter our current belief about evolutionary and civilization timelines…ie : bone hooks and tools of ancient Polynesian origin/style being found off the coast of California and pre-dating our traditional belief in Clovis first. *shiver* So cool.)I wonder if economics were treated as a holistic discipline with an organic relationship to its environs…if that would alter the way decisions and processes are viewed. If there were a tangible relationship between distant seeming numbers and real life impacts…and the relationship was spelled out clearly in classes..would people act so destructively? I do think theres a disconnect in the economic disciplines…because the actions that emerge from it show a disregard for humanity…they aren’t husbanding and developing wealth that empowers…they’re shoring up wealth that divides and drains. I gotta think about the symbolism and sigils concept as it applies to such disciplines. Now thats a mind fry …which is exactly why I like swingin thru Disinfo at least once a day. A day that passes without a new thought or concept intruding on me..is a day wasted.

Liam_McGonagle

My take on the sigil/symbolism thing is wound up more about its psychic interpretation than the mechanical specifics of its construction.

The mantra of traditional economic thought is ‘profit’–NOT productivity. Taken to its ridiculous extreme, profit is nothing more than plunder, an invitation to entrophy through overly aggressive harvesting.

In that way all these different statistical shorthands capturing the concept of profit–P&L statements, earnings per share, price earnings ratios–and are essentially reinforcing the proclivity towards that short-sighted harvesting. They are in a metaphorical, but nonetheless very true way, sigils conjuring power from a Death God.

Now the tables, charts, calculations and workbooks on my blog are the first, crude attempts to forge ‘counter-sigils’ that focus the mind (and eventually soul) on PRODUCTIVE, life-sustaining economic activities.

But like I say, these are only the first crude steps. Rational design is the beginning. In order to be a truly successful meme, they have to be invested with people’s imaginations. That happens every day for the bad guys working 16-hour days on Wall Street trading floors and in policy thinktanks.

My hope is that some geniuses in my audience physically and intellectually engage with those charts and workbooks, and come up with even better designs. Maybe someone will eventually be able to institutionalize their thoughts and refinements to the point that one day the Wal Street Journal prints daily Market Productivity Indices instead of bullshit share quotes, etc., etc.

http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

Love the dystopia diaries…good number crunching. You must have the kinda skills my chum from my gutter punk days picked up studying stat/analysis. Love that man like a brother…his mathematics and data extraction skills have spared me from many a nights headache. I weigh in heavier in the philosophy dept, semantics of language, classical literature etc…but I can’t extract data from raw statistics to save my life.

I’m inclined to look at it as team mates playing complementary positions. Half-forward, mid-field, etc., etc. The all-out onslaught required to carry out memetic struggle requires a deep, deep bench. As I’m finding out.

Some few folks respond intensely to the data crunching, but are left entirely in the cold by the weird literary allegories. And vice versa.

You know, almost all the stuff on Disinformation, including but beyond their regular book and DVD publications, is just incredibly mind expanding. I get lots of inspiration from these article postings, comments from folks like you and Emporerreagan and others.

One of my weirdest interpretations of a Disinfo-inspired idea was the inclusion of the workbooks supporting the calculations in the blogposts. I remember that 2007 speech of Grant Morrison’s at the convention where he went on at some length about the construction of magickal sigils as vehicles to focus one’s intentions for the accomplishment of some pretty miraculous feats.

And while I’m nearly 100% certain that Morrison could give a rat’s ass about economics as a discipline, I did recognize that the business and policy community employ sigils of their own. In fact they spend immense amounts of time and energy in constructing them–profit and loss statements, earnings-per-share calculations, market indices, economic and tax models, etc., etc.

It’s just unfortunate that, whether they’re aware of it or not, the sigils they’ve constructed are actually created in a spirit which spells our doom as a culture.

The rational and irrational are not quite so completely at odds as narrow idealist or positivist schools would have us believe. In fact, I don’t think you could ever really have an adequate understanding of either school unless you have a minimal understanding of BOTH schools.

Ironaddict06

Where is the IRA, when they are needed?

http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

I’ve had the same experience with disinfo…both the site and the books..especially the Underground! alternative archaeology release (I go a big rubbery one whenever I start reading about anomalous discoveries that alter our current belief about evolutionary and civilization timelines…ie : bone hooks and tooks of ancient Polynesian origin/style being found off the coast of California and pre-dating our traditional belief in Clovis first. *shiver* So cool.)

I wonder if economics were treated as a holistic discipline with an organic relationship to its environs…if that would alter the way decisions and processes are viewed. If there were a tangible relationship between distant seeming numbers and real life impacts…and the relationship was spelled out clearly in classes..would people act so destructively? I do think theres a disconnect in the economic disciplines…because the actions that emerge from it show a disregard for humanity…they aren’t husbanding and developing wealth that empowers…they’re shoring up wealth that divides and drains. I gotta think about the symbolism and sigils concept as it applies to such disciplines. Now thats a mind fry …which is exactly why I like swingin thru Disinfo at least once a day. A day that passes without a new thought or concept intruding on me..is a day wasted.

http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

I’ve had the same experience with disinfo…both the site and the books..especially the Underground! alternative archaeology release (I go a big rubbery one whenever I start reading about anomalous discoveries that alter our current belief about evolutionary and civilization timelines…ie : bone hooks and tooks of ancient Polynesian origin/style being found off the coast of California and pre-dating our traditional belief in Clovis first. *shiver* So cool.)

I wonder if economics were treated as a holistic discipline with an organic relationship to its environs…if that would alter the way decisions and processes are viewed. If there were a tangible relationship between distant seeming numbers and real life impacts…and the relationship was spelled out clearly in classes..would people act so destructively? I do think theres a disconnect in the economic disciplines…because the actions that emerge from it show a disregard for humanity…they aren’t husbanding and developing wealth that empowers…they’re shoring up wealth that divides and drains. I gotta think about the symbolism and sigils concept as it applies to such disciplines. Now thats a mind fry …which is exactly why I like swingin thru Disinfo at least once a day. A day that passes without a new thought or concept intruding on me..is a day wasted.

Earbudcontender

money represents will power which is magick which is delicious like pudding. Everything exists independently, what is right in front of you exists everything else you can imagine is in superposition and is only a possibly.

Now listen to Master Bey

Chaos comes before all principles of order & entropy, it’s neither a god nor a maggot, its idiotic desires encompass & define every possible choreography, all meaningless aethers & phlogistons: its masks are crystallizations of its own facelessness, like clouds.

Everything in nature is perfectly real including consciousness, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. Not only have the chains of the Law been broken, they never existed; demons never guarded the stars, the Empire never got started, Eros never grew a beard.

No, listen, what happened was this: they lied to you, sold you ideas of good & evil, gave you distrust of your body & shame for your prophethood of chaos, invented words of disgust for your molecular love, mesmerized you with inattention, bored you with civilization & all its usurious emotions.

There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you’re the monarch of your own skin–your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky.

To shed all the illusory rights & hesitations of history demands the economy of some legendary Stone Age–shamans not priests, bards not lords, hunters not police, gatherers of paleolithic laziness, gentle as blood, going naked for a sign or painted as birds, poised on the wave of explicit presence, the clockless nowever.

Earbudcontender

money represents will power which is magick which is delicious like pudding. Everything exists independently, what is right in front of you exists everything else you can imagine is in superposition and is only a possibly.

Now listen to Master Bey

Chaos comes before all principles of order & entropy, it’s neither a god nor a maggot, its idiotic desires encompass & define every possible choreography, all meaningless aethers & phlogistons: its masks are crystallizations of its own facelessness, like clouds.

Everything in nature is perfectly real including consciousness, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. Not only have the chains of the Law been broken, they never existed; demons never guarded the stars, the Empire never got started, Eros never grew a beard.

No, listen, what happened was this: they lied to you, sold you ideas of good & evil, gave you distrust of your body & shame for your prophethood of chaos, invented words of disgust for your molecular love, mesmerized you with inattention, bored you with civilization & all its usurious emotions.

There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you’re the monarch of your own skin–your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky.

To shed all the illusory rights & hesitations of history demands the economy of some legendary Stone Age–shamans not priests, bards not lords, hunters not police, gatherers of paleolithic laziness, gentle as blood, going naked for a sign or painted as birds, poised on the wave of explicit presence, the clockless nowever.

Liam_McGonagle

My take on the sigil/symbolism thing is wound up more about its psychic interpretation than the mechanical specifics of its construction.

The mantra of traditional economic thought is ‘profit’–NOT productivity. Taken to its ridiculous extreme, profit is nothing more than plunder, an invitation to entrophy through overly aggressive harvesting.

In that way all these different statistical shorthands capturing the concept of profit–P&L statements, earnings per share, price earnings ratios–and are essentially reinforcing the proclivity towards that short-sighted harvesting. They are in a metaphorical, but nonetheless very true way, sigils conjuring power from a Death God.

Now the tables, charts, calculations and workbooks on my blog are the first, crude attempts to forge ‘counter-sigils’ that focus the mind (and eventually soul) on PRODUCTIVE, life-sustaining economic activities.

But like I say, these are only the first crude steps. Rational design is the beginning. In order to be a truly successful meme, they have to be invested with people’s imaginations. That happens every day for the bad guys working 16-hour days on Wall Street trading floors and in policy thinktanks.

My hope is that some geniuses in my audience physically and intellectually engage with those charts and workbooks, and come up with even better designs. Maybe someone will eventually be able to institutionalize their thoughts and refinements to the point that one day the Wal Street Journal prints daily Market Productivity Indices instead of bullshit share quotes, etc., etc.

Hadrian999

actually not too long ago the RIRA announced a campaign against bankers was in the works

Guest

I’m very open minded to this kind of thing but this article is terrible! If you’re going to make such wild statements please at least TRY and back them up, if only with logic. I must say I’ve heard better arguements in the pub.

Guest

I’m very open minded to this kind of thing but this article is terrible! If you’re going to make such wild statements please at least TRY and back them up, if only with logic. I must say I’ve heard better arguements in the pub.

rtb61

The logic is investigate, prosecute and confiscate. Then the psuedo debt evaporates as the once rich spend the rest of their lives in prison, for treason, conspiracy to enact nationwide fraud, conspiracy to corrupt democracy, indirect acts of murder via corruption of the legal process.
Never forget there are only a few thousand of them and billions of us, soon as we really want them gone, they will be gone.

Toggle

A lot of readers might think your words are extreme or inflammatory. I do not. You’re right. If enough people want the rulers gone…they are gone. How to get the critical mass of citizens motivated and pointed in the right direction? We need to shout louder than the guys who control the media…and above all…..we cannot…repeat: CANNOT allow the rulers to control the flow of information on the internet….the internet remains the last bastion of a free press in this marketplace we call a world…..if the forces of evil(ie., bankers, ceos etc.,) control the net we will truly be in deep do-do!

Alturn

The problem is that regular people pay taxes but it is the rich and influential get the benefits.

“The time has come for money to be spent on the welfare of the nations. Every nation, every country, belongs to the people. Maitreya says: “Those who divide God’s health and wealth in the name of ideology are themselves corrupt.””
– Share International magazine

Alturn

The problem is that regular people pay taxes but it is the rich and influential get the benefits.

“The time has come for money to be spent on the welfare of the nations. Every nation, every country, belongs to the people. Maitreya says: “Those who divide God’s health and wealth in the name of ideology are themselves corrupt.””
– Share International magazine

Anonymous

The logic is investigate, prosecute and confiscate. Then the psuedo debt evaporates as the once rich spend the rest of their lives in prison, for treason, conspiracy to enact nationwide fraud, conspiracy to corrupt democracy, indirect acts of murder via corruption of the legal process.
Never forget there are only a few thousand of them and billions of us, soon as we really want them gone, they will be gone.

Nunoalex

Reading the comments here I see that people continue completely CLUELESS of what is going on.
If you apply the laws of physics to money maybe you will finally understand (doubt it)
I give you a hint: If ONE company with ONE BIG BOSS makes all the cars for the planet, ALL the money people spend in cars go to his pockets never to be seen again, like sucked into a black hole…

Nunoalex

Reading the comments here I see that people continue completely CLUELESS of what is going on.
If you apply the laws of physics to money maybe you will finally understand (doubt it)
I give you a hint: If ONE company with ONE BIG BOSS makes all the cars for the planet, ALL the money people spend in cars go to his pockets never to be seen again, like sucked into a black hole…

Toggle

A lot of readers might think your words are extreme or inflammatory. I do not. You’re right. If enough people want the rulers gone…they are gone. How to get the critical mass of citizens motivated and pointed in the right direction? We need to shout louder than the guys who control the media…and above all…..we cannot…repeat: CANNOT allow the rulers to control the flow of information on the internet….the internet remains the last bastion of a free press in this marketplace we call a world…..if the forces of evil(ie., bankers, ceos etc.,) control the net we will truly be in deep do-do!